Thomson

It’s a heck of a way to run a pre-election campaign. On the eve of an expected election, politicians usually spend their time playing up good news, downplaying the bad, shaking hands and kissing babies.

Give me a Tsimmer with a view

B & B, Israeli-Style; City folk are flocking to these country cabins

Nothing gave me a clearer snapshot of Israel's growing leisure class than the cluster of signs I saw late one afternoon at a fork in the road near the village of Ramot in the Upper Galilee. On each of the dozens of signs was the phone number and address of a "tsimmer."

The tsimmer is Israel's answer to the B & B, minus the breakfast, unless you request it, in which case you will awake to find one of the delightful Rabelaisian spreads that constitute the Israeli morning meal in a basket outside your door.

In the steadfast search for peace, quiet and a fabulous view, the whole country seems to have gone tsimmer-mad. The word is from the German zimmer (room), taken from the Zimmer Frei (rooms available) signs you see throughout the Swiss and German alps. Here, though, the name of the game is mega-indulgence.

Many of the tsimmers that dot the Israeli countryside are built of wood, presumably to make guests feel as if they are having a true country-living experience. You might think so, too, until you get inside one and see the flat-screen TVs, DVDs, high-tech sound systems, cappuccino machines and, seemingly a point of honour in so many tsimmers, that '70s icon of leisure, the Jacuzzi.

There are tsimmers all over the country, with the heaviest concentration in the Negev and Upper Galilee. Here you will find whole tsimmer villages such as the one where I stayed in Ramot. I heard that there was even a tsimmer village just for vegans nearby. (C'mon, all you hippie vegans, into the Jacuzzi!)

Though there are water and adventure sports on offer, not to mention boutique wineries to visit, tsimmers in the Galilee are all about the view. If everyone has their own vista of the shimmering Sea of Galilee (Israelis call it Lake Kineret) from their own tsimmer garden, guests don't mind having neighbours. In the Negev desert, on the other hand, the tsimmers are about being as isolated as possible. Some tsimmers resemble country spa resorts and offer massages. At the ultra-chic Cnaan Village spa in the Galilee I had a terrific "eclectic" massage, as the therapist called it. Some tsimmers are child-friendly; many more are adults-only.

Last month, when I was in Ramot, most of the tsimmers were booked by smart Tel Avivans who had come to see the phenomenally vibrant flowers in bloom, seemingly fertilized with Viagra. The mid-Easter orchids, the rare peonies and the Golan irises that bloom for two weeks every year on Hillel Mountain have a cult following similar to that of tulip season in Holland.

Amenities may be luxurious, but tsimmers are service-lite. Often you don't see the owner. When I arrived at my tsimmer, Betty and Nachi's Wooden Cabins, in Ramot, the key was in the door and all that was waiting for me was a bowl of goodies in the kitchen: a bottle of Golan Heights red, a bowl of oranges the size of grapefruit and some poppy-seed cake. There was a jar of Illy coffee and an espresso machine.

(I never ate the oranges left for me, preferring to pick my own from the trees on the property. A grapefruit I plucked one morning would probably have fallen to the ground three minutes later, it was so ripe; it was the juiciest and sweetest I've ever tasted.)

A wall with a fireplace in the middle divided the living room from the bedroom, with a plasma-screen TV on either side. A ladder climbed to a second, loft bedroom. I had my own sauna and, right beside my bed, there it was: a giant gurgling Jacuzzi. (Unsettling, given that the Sea of Galilee, the country's main water source, is low this year.)

Most tsimmer guests tend to cook their own meals, buying produce from farmers or roadside fruit sellers, but Betty and Nachi's onsite restaurant is always full of guests who come to sample their tasting menu.

Often a tsimmer will be owned by a member of a kibbutz or moshav (collective farm) who has been given a few acres of land as a source of extra income. I left my tsimmer on a Monday and the weekending crowds had already gone home. Breakfast, I learned, would be served at another tsimmer down the road.

Here was a mishmash of Israeli collective living and capitalism. Though they are competitors, the tsimmer owners belong to the same kibbutz, I was told, and when guests are few, neighbouring tsimmers will often band together to make one big breakfast. I walked down a gravel road to the indicated place and sat under a canopy in a beautiful garden that could have been in Provence. Different tsimmer, same view. - The Web sites www.zimmer.co.il and www.goisrael.ca/tourism_eng/items/accommodations.htm list B & Bs throughout Israel. Prices depend on time of year or week, but a good one can cost as much as a luxury hotel.